Wavinator's many, many posts about his SF RPG inspired me to pull out a little project I had sitting around called Anomaly. The thing was, the game was pretty much done (it's basically a blow crap away and pretend to use strategy space game), but it had no story. So, today, while no one was on TA , I threw this together. It's a very rough draft, since I prefer fantasy-based storylines, but I'm looking to flesh it out. Ideas anyone? Edit: See down a few posts for the latest version. Lame, I know, but it's a start. More info on the game itself follows: Basically, you have two interfaces: a system overview, where you tell the ships where to go, and a fight screen, where you zoom in to the planet to see the fighting between the ships. The zoom adjusts accordingly to fit all ships on screen, and the appearance can be likened to Homeworld with a fixed-angled camera. Reinforcements jump in through jump gates periodically for both sides. There are four different ships per side, which are different in appearance and ability to the other Corporation. However, there are essentially 4 basic classes: scout, fighter, support (missiles or beam weapon), and capital. It's not a big game, but it's quite fun and once it's done, I'll put the whole thing out as freeware for a few months and then release all the code, graphics, sounds and music copyright-free for you lot to butcher. Edited by - morfe on January 11, 2001 5:59:59 AM

This sounds like a good story and an interesting game. Of course the big question is how the story/plot is presented and developed, but keep it up.

You mean I''ve inspired something other than annoyance?!

The start of your story sounds fine. Megacorps rule (in space, at least) and Earthgovs are too self-interested and short sighted to do anything about it. Sounds about right to me.

But I wonder if you could make the fight over something more substantial than living space? Historically, powers have clashed over vital resources more than they''ve fought over habitat. Even when the fight was over actual land, that land translated to some economic gain: Land for cotton, or oil, or gold.

Is it possible that you could have some rare resource only found in this star cluster? For instance, it could be some new fuel that BPI and QTI depend on. Maybe most of their profits come from selling it to the Earthgovs, so loss of the resource is of of direct financial threat.

The next branch of the story seems fine. The two sides have had a protracted, low intensity conflict for years / decades. But what dramatically changed to heat up the war? Why are both sides starting out roughly equal? (I''m being your Eight Grade English teacher right now, feel free to ignore me. Just trying to help.)

The catalyst could be a breakthrough, which one side makes and the other side steals. It could be Precursor/First One/Ancients technology, which explains the origin of the rare resource.

I''d very much like to see your game, btw. Congrats on the progress, and for picking it up again! (Heh, it gives me hope for the monstrosity I''m working on!!!)



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Thank you Wavinator. I was hoping you'd share your boundless intellect with me on this matter

Okay how about this?

The year is 2112. Mankind has only recently discovered jump gate technology, but due to the massive cost of manufacturing the necessary jump engines, Earth's governments have been unable to afford them. Only the two largest multi-national corporations have the necessary funding to produce spacecraft capable of using jump gates and so the race is on between the two to get colonise planets before the other.

During the furious race to harvest resources and rare minerals from other planets, as well as identify habitable worlds whose location could be sold to potential colonists, a hitherto unknown element was discovered. This new element, which was labelled Paradim, allowed for the miniaturization of processors for both QTI's quantum and BPI's organic computers on a scale previously unimagined.

Paradim proved difficult to extract, and so large mining stations were deployed upon planets rich in the mineral. The opposing corporations of QTI and BPI began a campaign of deliberate sabotage of their competition's stations. Warnings turned to litigation, litigation turned to hostile threats, which in turn led to open fighting.

When conventional weapons turn out ineffective, the two forces utilised the awesome computing power of their respective technologies to research ships and weapons which would give them both superiority, and the greater market share.

Each produced new, devastatingly powerful ships that used technology almost alien in appearance. QTI developed ships that use Quantum particle weapons, whilst the BPI developed ships with organic hulls. Now, the fight is on. Who will win? Only you can decide...

Okay, pick that to pieces now, please.

(Bear in mind, I wrote the other one while on TA. That's gotta explain how little attention and effort went into it )


"NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..."

Edited by - morfe on January 11, 2001 4:50:18 AM

quote: Original post by morfe

Okay how about this?

This fits much better. I like.

quote:
The year is 2012. Mankind has only recently discovered jump gate technology, but due to the massive cost of manufacturing the necessary jump engines, Earth''s governments have been unable to afford them. Only the two largest multi-national corporations have the necessary funding to produce spacecraft capable of using jump gates and so the race is on between the two to get colonise planets before the other.

One thing I forgot to ask: 2012? A nitpick, and a very minor one at that. Would 2112 work? I only ask because by 2012 I don''t think we''ll even have the stupid space station done. (Erm, like I said... MINOR )

quote:
During the furious expansion to harvest resources and rare minerals from other planets, as well as identify M-Class planets to sell coordinates of to colonists, a hitherto unknown element was discovered. This new element, which was labelled Paradim, allowed for the processors of both QTI''s quantum and BPI''s organic computers to be miniaturised on an exponentially smaller scale.

How about this

During the furious race to harvest resources and rare minerals from other planets, as well as identify habitable worlds whose location could be sold to potential colonists, a hitherto unknown element was discovered. This new element, which was labelled Paradim, allowed for the miniaturization of processors for both QTI''s quantum and BPI''s organic computers on a scale previously unimagined.

quote:
Paradim proved difficult to extract, and so large mining stations were deployed upon planets rich in the mineral. The opposing corporations of QTI and BPI began a campaign of deliberate sabotage of their competition''s stations. Warnings turned to litigation, litigation turned to hostile threats, which in turn led to open fighting.

I like the way this builds up. I can''t remember, though: Is an element also a mineral? Hydrogen is an element, right? So maybe this should be called a mineral (this is what I get for sleeping my way through Chem )

quote:
When conventional weapons turn out to be ineffective, the two forces utilised the awesome computing power of their respective technologies to research ships and weapons which would give them both superiority, and the greater market share.

Good.

quote:
Each produced new, devastatingly powerful ships that used technology almost alien in appearance. QTI developed ships that use Quantum particle weapons, whilst the BPI developed ships with organic hulls. Now, the fight is on. Who will win? Only you can decide...

OK, I''m ready to play!

quote:
(Bear in mind, I wrote the other one while on TA. That''s gotta explain how little attention and effort went into it )

TA? Every time I see this I think "Total Annihilation." Or "Teacher''s Assistant." But then it''s 1 am here and I''m experiencing the onset of complete neuro-synaptic failure... (Nurse!!! 20 cc''s of caffiene, stat!!!)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

OK, here is my story. It is abit diffrent, but here it goes:

It is the year 2112, a small university has discovered a meathod to create efficiant quantum computers. The computers are so advanced that their speed is infinate. Combined with an advanced form of quantum memory, they had one of the most powerful super computers in the world.

Within a few days they had done some pailiminary tests on the machine, as well as done some of the standard tasks that a super computer was tested with, such as working out pi to an infinate number of decimal places, as well as a complete list of prime numbers. Of course both lists were infinate, and there by surpassed any other computer of the day.

Within a few days, the world government had heard of this advance, even thought it had not been made knowen to the public. Knowing what such an advance could mean, especialy if the Divergant Teritoriesaquired it, they imediatly sent in some of their best secret agents to aquire the computer, as well as the technical documentation. Then they disroyed the city with nuclear weapons, and blamed it on the the Divergant Teritories.

The Divergant Teritories, are of cause nations that refused to join the World Government. They have always had spies and so on, and tried their best to make life bad for the people of the world government. While this was happening, the Divergant Teritories discovered that a quantum computer had been discovered and then aquired by the world government. However they were not worried, for they had been doing secret reasearch deep underground. They had discovered how to create Biological processors as well as biological memory.

So the World government had Quantum Computers, and The Divergant Teritories had Biological Computers. They continued like this in upmost secrecy. At first both used the computers to assist them in designing weapons to help fight the war, but after a few years the two had stopped fighting. There was a mass problem with food and space shortages.

The two continued to try and make ways of solving the problem. The World Government''s computers had the advantatge of being infinatly fast with infinate memory, while the Divergant Teritories had computers with the advantage of both being very fast, with large ammounts of memory, but also had the huge advantage of true artifical intlegence.

Because the suitable planets were located so far away, conventinal rockets could not make the journy. Instead the Divergant Teritories'' computers had come up with a with a means of space travel, they called a jump gate. They used this gate to completly move off earth to a planet called Sota. At the time neither knew about what the other was doing, due to much new anti-spy technology, so the movement of the the Divergant Teritories off world was completly unkowen to the world government.

The World government had long ago come up with jump gateing long ago when they were studying quantum technology. However use of such gates required a mineral that was extremly rare on earth, so they only had one small gate, which was shut down long ago for lack of fuel.

Within a year, however their situation became desprate, they plucked up the courage to invade the Divergant Teritories'' lands, in search of the mineral. They discovered a vast wastland, where once had been a major civilation. They discovered suficient minerals to transport their entire population to another world they knew as Terron.

The two worlds thrived for many years, oblivious to each other, but then, both the Terrons and the Sotas once more ran out of room on their planets. They both happened upon the same planet to colinise. This is because the planet was rich in the mineral they used to power their jump gate technology. Then, mass war broke out, for control over, not only the inhabitable planets, but the minerals they needed to keep jumping, so as to keep their population alive.

The Terrons had strange looking ships that were created with powerful simulation and advanced trial and error using genetinc moddeling in their quantum computers, while the Sotas had powerful bio computers that designed ships with organic hulls and other advanced bio-technology, that the quantum computer were incapable of designing, because their programers lacked the knowledge of how to make a bio-tech materials.



OK, if you want to use it, all I ask is that I get a mention in the credits, and a free copy of the game. Of course if you dont want to do that, you could be a bum and just use it anyway, becuase I only asked, not required.

ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS

Andrew:

Thanks, but I was kinda after embellishment of my story. Yours is appreciated however. I think you may have also missed the point about the game being completely free and open source. So you will obviously already get a free copy of the game.

Wavinator:

TA is Tiberian Adventure, Pouya's Talker/MUD

And the year is now offically 2112, alright?


"NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..."

Edited by - morfe on January 11, 2001 5:52:16 AM

morfe was give the approprate .trout treatment on the TA.

Here is a transcript:

prepair for the result
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
AndrewRussell smacks Merrick with a large tiberian trout
Merrick is rolling on the floor, laughing too hard to stop
please don''t do that, I have no scrollback

ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS

Will you stop it!!!

Incase anyone dosn''t know, morfe (merrick on the TA) has developed this ANNOYING habit of correcting my every spelling mistake.

I on the other hand have got into the habit of having a notepad window with the words ".trout merrick" on hand. If such a correction occures, he will be .trout-ed.

Anyway, I have also .trouted him some more for that last post as well.

ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS

And then you go deleting your posts!

(he corrected me before those two posts!)

.trout merrick

ANDREW RUSSELL STUDIOS

Edited by - Andrew Russell on January 11, 2001 6:02:00 AM